The Church’s Coming Catastrophe

Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, head of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, talking about the McCarrick mess (EWTN News screengrab)

I talk to Catholics across the country all day, every day. That’s my job. It seems evident to me that the American hierarchy is facing a crisis exceeding in magnitude any other in recent memory. Those who understand that will lead people to Jesus. Those who don’t will not.

I had not intended to post another Catholic scandal item today, but then I saw the above tweet by J.D. Flynn, and, given Flynn’s reputation and his position as editor-in-chief of Catholic News Agency, I had second thoughts. That J.D. Flynn believes this is big news, I believe. And for me personally, it’s a strange feeling to observe that the same sense that overtook me around 2005, and led to me leaving the Catholic Church, seems to be arising more generally.

Looking back on it, it was not sexual abuse by priests that caused me to lose my Catholic faith. It was the chronic lying and deceptive actions by bishops, and the inescapable conclusion that they could not be trusted to reform the Church. I knew back then that a lot of them were gay and personally compromised — McCarrick first among them — and that the “good bishops” — those who actually believed what the Catholic Church taught, and who lived chastely and celibately — were ultimately never going to criticize their brother bishops or take any risks to talk openly and frankly about the crisis. I was faced with the unavoidable conclusion that nothing serious was going to change in the Church, and that I had to accept that as a Catholic.

The laity, by and large, did not care. They were satisfied to believe the bishops’ reassurances that they (the bishops) were on top of things, and were leading the Church to a better place. If I was going to stay Catholic, I had to get to a place inside myself where I could live with that. I tried for a year after coming to the conclusion that the bishops were a hopeless case. Mind you, there was a lot going on inside me theologically then, and I was wrestling with all this in a context in which parish life was nothing but a Sacrament Factory. In the end, I reached the point where I simply could not accept that my eternal salvation meant being in communion with those bishops — and, in fact, given how my own anger at the lies and the injustice was eating me away inside, my salvation might depend on breaking that communion.

I’m not interested in arguing with anybody today on the theological errors I may have made there (so don’t even try posting on that; I won’t approve those comments). I’m speaking here to how emotionally overwhelming it is to realize that the bishops of one’s church are so out of touch with what it ought to mean to be a decent Christian, and to come to believe that there is no lie that they will not tell — either by commission or omission — to protect their status.

I remember walking through Manhattan with a priest friend in 2002, as the scandal was raging nationwide. I asked him how the Catholic bishops could have done the things they did, and how is it that they don’t react like ordinary Christians, when confronted with the horrors of priest sex abuse and clerical sexual corruption. He said ruefully, “They don’t believe in God.” What he meant was that they believe in the Church — the Catholic institution — as an end in itself.

Along those lines, I have thought many times since then of something an old monsignor told a different priest friend as they observed a group of seminarians from their archdiocese headed off to Rome to study at the elite North American College: “Those poor boys. They leave here in love with Jesus, and they come home in love with the Church.”

Why do I bring this up here? Because if J.D. Flynn is right, the Catholic Church in the US may be sitting on a bubble that’s about to pop. I was a fervent Catholic who understood something of theology. My theological convictions, and my reason, was like a shark cage that allowed me to observe the evil within the Church from a safe remove. Eventually, though, the beast tore through the bars, and devoured me. If that can happen to me, it could happen to a lot of people. Their theology, their family traditions, those might give them the strength to hold on despite the revelations to come. But I wouldn’t count on it.

Believe it or not, as a former Catholic, that grieves me. It honestly does. I had to get to a place where I quit feeling responsible for fixing what was wrong in the Catholic Church before I could regain my love for what is good and holy and beautiful in it. It took cutting myself off from its bishops to do so. Based on what I’ve seen and heard, my fear is that Catholics who walk away from their Church will not go into Orthodoxy, as I have done (with gratitude to God for the gift), or into some form of Protestantism, but will be lost to Christianity forever. I was on an Evangelical radio show yesterday in Pittsburgh, and the hosts took pains to say that none of us Christians should be gloating or feeling triumphalist about the agonies of our Catholic brothers and sisters. No decent Christian is taking pleasure in any of this. The stakes are eternal.

The Catholic laity seems to be stirring in the face of the McCarrick scandal, waking up to the inability of their bishops to comprehend the magnitude of this crisis, much less act to solve it. These two interviews this week with top cardinals — Daniel DiNardo, head of the USCCB, and Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington — are two real “let them eat cake” moments that reveal the incapacity of the Church’s aristocratic class to comprehend the reality of their own positions:

Watch those clips, and you’ll see two princes of the Church who are utterly clueless.

I’m seeing more and more Catholic bishops issuing statements about McCarrick, and more and more Catholic laity saying, “Sorry, not good enough.” For example, Bishop William Wack of the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee issued this public statement about McCarrick. John Schwenkler, an academic philosopher who lives and teaches in that diocese, responded with a letter to the bishop, which he also posted publicly. Excerpt:

Something big is coming. J.D. Flynn sees it. If the media — the mainstream media, or the alternative media — start digging into the gay networks within the Church, which is unavoidable if you want to understand how Theodore McCarrick gained power and maintained it for so long, the bishops are going to be badly exposed. What happens after that, God only knows. The only thing protecting the US bishops now is the fact that the mainstream media is (so far) avoiding that story, and most Catholic laity aren’t fully aware of Cardinal McCarrick and what his disgrace means.

Maybe they’ll get away with it again. Maybe.

UPDATE: I just received a report on the big meeting that Lincoln Bishop James Conley had with parishioners in Wahoo, Nebraska, last night, in the wake of his removing Father Charles Townsend from active ministry. Townsend had spent a decade as the pastor in that town before moving to a parish in Lincoln, from which he was just removed after an incident involving alcohol and an underage drinker came to light.

My source said the crowd at the church last night was big and very hostile to the bishop — for what he did to poor Father Townsend! I’m told that the crowd’s overwhelming sentiment was that Bishop Conley unfairly attacked a good priest for what they consider to be a minor incident. Source says that Father Townsend has written privately to some of his former parishioners saying he did nothing wrong.

One man in the audience stood and asked Bishop Conley to confirm or deny that within the last 12 months, an active Lincoln priest had come forward to tell him (the bishop) that Monsignor Kalin had molested him. According to my source, the bishop remained silent, but the man persisted in his questioning. The bishop said no, that didn’t happen.

If anybody else was at that meeting and cares to share their perspective, please post it in the comments.

I am very troubled by the reported response from the audience (assuming that it was reported accurately). Troubled, but not quite surprised. If the Catholic bishops are in crisis, so too are the laity, it seems to me. As I wrote above, back during the first round of scandal (2002-2007), I became discouraged because so many of the laity didn’t seem to know what was going on, or want to know. True, there were plenty of Catholic laity who were angry over it and didn’t know what to do about it, but I was misled by the fact that my personal circles were filled with Catholics who were and are really engaged with their faith and the Church. I couldn’t figure out why the bishops were getting away with it when so many laypeople were angry at them.

Eventually I came to realize that most of the laity really didn’t care. The scandal was something that happened to Other Parishes. There were some cases where bishops had removed corrupt priests, and faced a buzzsaw of anger from parishioners who loved that priest. The truth, I came to believe, is that most ordinary Catholics are happy with the way things are, and don’t want the boat rocked.

This is not just a Catholic thing. This is human nature. People in dysfunctional families will go to great lengths to avoid seeing the dysfunction, or to deny it outright, because they fear that admitting that it’s there will bring the entire structure that gives their lives meaning crashing down. This is why bishops lied for decades about molesting priests: “for the good of the Church.” This is why some good Catholics today would prefer not to talk about ugly truths about clerical corruption: they are afraid that people will lose their faith.

But if one’s faith depends on avoiding painful truths, how strong is that faith, anyway?

Here’s the thing: overall, the faith of the coming generation of American Catholics is extraordinarily weak. All Christian churches in the US are in trouble on this point, but Catholics are especially vulnerable. The kind of go-along-to-get-along Catholicism that stands by good ol’ father because he’s a hale fellow who enjoys having a beer with folks, who gives chipper sermons, and who oversaw the construction of a new gym, out of which the team won the state basketball championship — that kind of Catholicism is going to be gone within a generation. The young are simply going to fade away.

Why? Because there is nothing to keep them there. The content of the religion itself has been hollowed out by decades of dull sermons and poor catechesis, both in parishes and in Catholic schools. Far too many Catholic families have not practiced the faith diligently in their own homes, having outsourced it to the parish and to Catholic schools (Christian Smith, the Notre Dame sociologist who studied this problem — see the link in the previous paragraph — said families are the most important factor in whether or not the faith is passed on to the next generation). Those who hold on in spite of all this have to do so despite the fact that they are marginalized in many parts of the Church, precisely because of their orthodoxy. And now they’re going to be asked to deal with coming revelations about the episcopate that are going to shake them.

If you are Catholic, and want to stay Catholic, and want your children to stay Catholic, prepare for this time of great trial. In The Benedict Option, I wrote:

Leaving Norcia and going back down the mountain, a pilgrim might envy the monks the simplicity of their lives in the quiet village. The serenity and solidity of Norcia and its Benedictines seem so far from the tumultuous world below, and you shouldn’t be surprised if you miss it before you’ve even reached the train station in Spoleto. But if you have received the gift of Norcia rightly, you do not leave empty-handed and unprepared for what lies ahead.

For the brothers and fathers there will have given you a glimpse of what life together in Christ can be. They will have shown you that traditional Christianity is not dead, and that Truth, Beauty, and Goodness can be found and brought to life again, though doing so will cost you nothing less than everything. And they will have shared their ancient teaching, tendered by the hands of monks and nuns from generations of generations for a millennium and a half—wisdom that can help ordinary believers, doing battle in the modern world, not only hold firm through the new Dark Age but actually to flourish in it.

How do we take Benedictine wisdom out of the monastery and apply it to the challenges of worldly life in the twenty-first century? It is to this question that we now turn. The way of Saint Benedict is not an escape from the real world but a way to see that world and dwell in it as it truly is. Benedictine spirituality teaches us to bear with the world in love and to transform it as the Holy Spirit transforms us. The Benedict Option draws on the virtues in the Rule to change the way Christians approach politics, church, family, community, education, our jobs, sexuality, and technology.

And it does so with urgency. When I first told Father Cassian about the Benedict Option, he mulled my words and replied gravely, “Those who don’t do some form of what you’re talking about, they’re not going to make it through what’s coming.”

Take this seriously, please. Read Leah Libresco’s brand-new book Building The Benedict Option for practical advice from one of the brightest young lights of her Catholic generation. It is not enough to blame the bishops, however blameworthy they may be. It is not enough to blame the priests. It is not enough to blame the mediocrity of the laity. All of these things may be true, but let’s be real: nobody is going to come save you and your family. Use this time of purification to go deeper into your faith, where Jesus Christ is. If you compromise with serious sin for the sake of peace of mind, you will, in the end, lose both your faith and your peace of mind.

Don’t want to believe me, a muckraking former Catholic? None other than Father Joseph Ratzinger, the future Benedict XVI, predicted all this in 1969. The entire prophecy is here. Excerpt:

The future of the Church can and will issue from those whose roots are deep and who live from the pure fullness of their faith. It will not issue from those who accommodate themselves merely to the passing moment or from those who merely criticize others and assume that they themselves are infallible measuring rods; nor will it issue from those who take the easier road, who sidestep the passion of faith, declaring false and obsolete, tyrannous and legalistic, all that makes demands upon men, that hurts them and compels them to sacrifice themselves. To put this more positively: The future of the Church, once again as always, will be reshaped by saints, by men, that is, whose minds probe deeper than the slogans of the day, who see more than others see, because their lives embrace a wider reality. Unselfishness, which makes men free, is attained only through the patience of small daily acts of self-denial. By this daily passion, which alone reveals to a man in how many ways he is enslaved by his own ego, by this daily passion and by it alone, a man’s eyes are slowly opened. He sees only to the extent that he has lived and suffered. If today we are scarcely able any longer to become aware of God, that is because we find it so easy to evade ourselves, to flee from the depths of our being by means of the narcotic of some pleasure or other. Thus our own interior depths remain closed to us. If it is true that a man can see only with his heart, then how blind we are!

More:

And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. It may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but it will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death.

Ratzinger is talking about Catholicism, but I believe this is true of all Christianity in the West. The peace you see around you is a false peace, and it is coming to an end. The Catholic Church, like all churches in the West today, may face persecution by the State, but it has far, far more to fear from corruption within itself.

UPDATE.2: A long e-mail from a parish priest, with some sharp words, including for me:

I would just like to offer some thoughts to you two points you seem to keep noting; the supposed apathy of the laity and the response of the bishops these scandals.

1. The Laity who “don’t care”

As of yet no one is talking about it in my parish or any laity I am affiliated with. This is true of other priests I know. What I am seeing is that there is a disparity between professional bloggers and regular Catholics. Most people don’t read blogs and spend time on Catholic websites. So everything you, and others, have been talking about is completely unknown to them. I would say it’s less than 1% of Catholics.

Your continued general conclusion is that Catholics don’t care. That may account for some of the people, but that’s a simplistic conclusion. I think it’s quite possible that most Catholics don’t know.

I have also heard from laity that it’s not that they don’t care about scandals it’s that they no longer care about bishops. After 2002 bishops decided that they needed to listen to lawyers and insurance companies when making decisions about their priests and laity. In doing so they lost most of their spiritual credibility because it became clear that they were focused on protecting the Church first. They were more interested in protecting property, finances and reputation. In doing so many good laity and priests have been treated poorly, not because they abused anyone, but in the name of liability they have been treated so severely that it has caused lasting damage. The damage is that of lost relationships. Bishops are not spiritual fathers or shepherds anymore, so why should laity or priests care about a gay bishop getting caught? I think many are saying something to the effect of, “karma is a bitch!” My point isn’t that people don’t care about the Church, it’s that they stopped caring about bishops long ago.

Another point is that we have become so inundated with sexual scandals in our culture that people have become numb to it. It’s everywhere, not just in the Church. The days of saying it’s a Church problem are clearly over. It’s not nearly as big of a scandal as it was in 2002.

People also know they cannot do anything. Period. All of the bloggers with their grand ideas notwithstanding. The laity cannot really do anything to reform the Church at the hierarchical level. The sooner everyone realizes this the better.

I think people are Catholic at the local level. Most people rarely consider the larger church. They engage Catholicism at their parish which is where they should be. And isn’t that what you espouse with the Benedict Option? That they should be engaging at the local level and supporting good priests and good Catholic community at the micro and not macro level? On one hand, Rod, you seem very upset that more Catholics are not railing for institutional change, on the other hand you are telling them to follow the Benedict Option. I think many Catholics go to Mass, say their prayers and are engaged in their faith at a personal level. But just because they are not calling for institutional change on Catholic blogs doesn’t mean they don’t care. Again, most of them probably don’t care about your blogs.

2. The bishops and their statements.

First of all they know they cannot do anything. No bishop or review board would ever have any power over another bishop. That power is reserved to the Holy See alone.

Bishops are equal. Look at DiNardo’s disaster of an interview to EWTN where he is trying to explain working with other bishops. I’m sure he isn’t that much of an idiot in real life. What he is probably trying to say is neither he nor the conference can make any other bishop do anything. And anything they decide regarding bishops would have to be approved by Rome, which may not happen. There’s actually a good chance it won’t happen.

I think a good dividing line between bishops’ statements are those who are calling for outside help and those who are not. The ones who think bishops can handle this problem themselves may want to hide something. The ones who have no problem calling for laity or a Vatican investigator likely have nothing to hide.

That being said, perhaps the best way to make sure an investigation does happen is to try to get the Vatican do it and not involve a lay board. Why? Because only the Holy Father has authority over bishops. Second, just because people are upset does not mean that the Church is going to change the way it governs. And why should it? Once you start catering to the mob you are going to have chaos. Further, bishops know they don’t really have to cooperate with a lay board because they wouldn’t have any real power over them. In that event bishops with something to hide could still do it to no real ill effect.

Another point, I think it’s just making things worse to be asserting that the hierarchy, en masse, doesn’t believe in God or is simply evil. How is that helpful? I understand how someone might say that as a joke, but I think it’s a ridiculous statement, in actuality. I bet McCarrick believes in God. I’m quite sure all of the bishops believe in God. But statements like that stem from this idea that the bishops don’t care about the Church or the people of God, which I just don’t think is the case. It’s not the most logical conclusion.

The most logical conclusion, it seems to me, is not that these men who have spent their lives serving people became corrupt and simply don’t care about people anymore. I think it’s more complex than that. Certainly, some may be compromised by their homosexuality. Some may want to change church teaching on that issue. Nothing new on either point there.

My assertion is that the most likely explanation for what we are seeing isn’t corruption, it’s incompetence. I don’t think they know what to do given their limitations canonically and civilly. A bishops’ conference cannot simply investigate brother bishops and determine who is and who is not morally corrupt. It’s not unlike being the pastor of a parish. If the neighboring pastor isn’t doing his job I can’t really do anything. The most I can do is either tell him to do his job (he may or may not listen to me) or I take it higher (they may or may not do anything). But that’s all I can do. It’s about the same with bishops. They have limitations.

3. How does reform actually happen?

Like it always has. It happens at the personal level, at the parochial level and, maybe, at the diocesan level.

For all the people clamoring about wanting priests to be holy, well what about you? Why don’t you try being holy and stop pointing fingers? By the way who in the Hell gave you the right to determine who is and who is not holy anyway? Many of the Catholic bloggers sound a lot like pharisees to me. Sexual abuse notwithstanding, priests are going to sin and sometimes sexually. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have a chance to repent and reform their lives just like every other Catholic. There has never been a time in the Church when this dynamic was not the reality. The priesthood includes guys from as young as 30years old (who began seminary as young as 24 or so). There must be room for conversion of life and repentance from sin and this includes sexual sin. (Of course I am excluding abuse.)

Part of the problem today is this widespread rigorism that has crept into the Church. It has come back time and time again throughout the centuries and it has always been the enemy of the Church. Some of these bloggers would never have let St. Augustine or St. Peter into the priesthood. Since you rigorists are being so hard on priests, consider doing the same to the laity. Why not reveal publicly every couple who doesn’t fulfill the conjugal act according to their public vow? Or every married man who masturbates while looking at porn and violates his public vow? Every layman is called to the same standard as a priest. He is no different. A priest isn’t called to more and a layman called to less. They are called to the same standard. If we are going to reveal every sin of every priest let’s reveal every sin of every layman too! That’s where rigorism leads and that’s why it is the enemy of the Church.

At the parish level reform happens if you have a priest who seems to be someone you can rally around. If you think you have a good priest who is faithful then support him. Get involved in ministry, support the parish financially, help him make the parish successful. If the parish is successful other parishes will want to emulate it.

It is theoretically possible that reform could happen at the diocesan level. If the same conditions are being met by the bishop that would be met by a pastor. Thus, the same type of support could be given to such a bishop.

4. Can the laity effect change now?

Yes, they can. Here’s how they do it. It’s very simple. Stop giving money to any bishop’s campaign or national collection until Rome starts an investigation into the McCarrick situation.

1. When you tithe to your parish designate on your check or envelope that the money is reserved and to go to your building or maintenance fund.

What the bishops did to protect the diocesan and parish assets is they made each of the parishes their own corporations (not sure if all dioceses did this). In doing so it makes it much easier to donate directly to the individual corporation. If you simply donate in the collection plate and do not designate then the diocese will tax that money, but if you designate your gift and restrict it only to be used by the parish the diocese cannot legally touch it. But (to my knowledge) you must designate it to a particular function of the parish like a maintenance fund or even a particular ministry. Ask your pastor how to do this.

2. Stop giving to the bishop’s annual appeal. Send the request envelope back and state why you are not giving.

3. Stop giving to the second collections unless they go to your parish specifically (those are designated gifts). All of those second collections are national or diocesan. You may want to give to some that you really believe in, but if they go to diocesan offices (many do) then don’t give.

Consider how many ways bishops get your money:

They tax the parish between 6% and 13% from the collection plateThere is the annual bishop’s appealThere are numerous Sunday second collections that go to diocesan offices

Bishops will also start large scale capital campaigns. If you look at where the money goes a large portion will often go to sustaining chancery services.

If you starve the bishops of cash they will change or you will render their influence far less effectual on the individual parishes. I think what we need to see is parishes with “good” priests and congregations having more power. Essentially the way to do that is to render the bishop as irrelevant as possible upon your parish.

I appreciate the words and the correction.

UPDATE.3: Peter Mitchell e-mails:

Rod, I was inspired to come forward with my August 1 essay about Monsignor Kalin’s abuse by a priest of the Lincoln Diocese who sadly was sexually molested when he was a seminarian by Monsignor Kalin in the shower. This past year, my priest friend courageously and painfully shared his story with me for the first time, and I know that he also courageously shared it with Bishop Conley for the first time. My priest-friend’s courage to break the “code of silence” surrounding Kalin’s abuse inspired me to do the same, knowing that I would be shouted down by many disbelieving people as a liar and a sinner. Whatever good fruit comes from my essay is the fruit of my priest-friend’s heroic courage. He is the reason I dared to speak, knowing as well that there are many others whom Kalin abused.

It is bewildering and frustrating to me to see that in its official statements, the Lincoln Diocese continues to say that there was only one allegation of misconduct brought against Kalin in 1998, and that this misconduct was addressed with Kalin while he was still alive, because I know that my friend only shared his story with Bishop Conley within the past twelve months. Apparently, last night at the “listening session” in Wahoo Bishop Conley again stated that there had never been any other allegation of abuse brought against Kalin.

The Diocese is evidently very afraid of the truth about Kalin ever coming out. But they have to realize that people know. Why are they continuing to be dishonest? This is now a world-wide crisis in the Church, and the crisis is that bishops — not priests — have been dishonest, evasive, and silent.

Bishop Conley, please tell us the truth. It will set you and many others free.

This is interesting. If former Lincoln priest Peter Mitchell is telling the truth, that means Bishop Conley was not telling the truth last night when he said that there were no allegations against Kalin. If there is a priest of Lincoln that came to Bishop Conley in the past year about Kalin, I hope he will find the courage to come forward.

UPDATE.4: Karl Keating comments:

1. In his autobiography, “The Church and I,” Catholic apologist Frank Sheed (who, with his wife, Maisie Ward, founded the publishing house Sheed & Ward), had a chapter titled “I Lose My Awe of Bishops.”

It was about the bishops of the 1930s. As a group, the American bishops weren’t too impressive a long lifetime ago, and the passing years didn’t improve them.

2. I don’t expect the withholding of donations to accomplish anything. Bishops have ways of getting around such things, which to them are mere inconveniences.

Even if diocesan funds plummet, the problem bishops won’t change because the problem, for them and for the abusive priests they protect, is homosexuality. They won’t care whether their dioceses have to cut back on construction projects, schools, and charitable outreaches. Above all, they will protect themselves and their favorite sins.

UPDATE.5: The priest in Update.2 writes more:

Some further thoughts on what Keating said. To expand a little bit.

What are people supposed to do if they can do precious little to change things? They want to support their church but they don’t want money going to the bishop. I gave a way to do it.
Will cutting off money to the bishops make a difference? It might. Likely only if it is significant. Consider if a diocese takes 10% of a yearly collection of $1 million. If 30% of that money was redirected the diocese would see a drop of $30k. Let’s say there was a movement by the laity to make a statement this year on all bishop’s appeals and national collections not to give money until the Church reforms it’s hierarchy? And I mean all bishops and all dioceses. Pressure needs to be put on every diocese. So even the “good” bishops need to feel the pinch because that will motivate them to take action. Let’s say that 30% of the people get on board? If that many people decided not to give to the annual appeal you don’t think the bishops would care? On something like a $6 million appeal that would be $2 million. Most of that money goes to the chancery and supports the diocesan structure. If the bishop doesn’t get that money he has to start cutting staff. If the movement gets going big enough the bishop can sit alone in his chancery with his gay lover, but at that point who cares? The point is what can the laity do? Focus on what is possible as opposed to what is not.

Now the bishop could just take more from the parishes, unless that money is protected by being designated.

Extrapolate that 30% on a national level. Even 20% would make a huge statement. Now if the laity are truly as upset as everyone says they should be able to effect some kind of movement like this. If they cannot, then the laity aren’t really that upset. Given social media and how many Catholics have access to blogs and Catholic media there shouldn’t be any problem getting such a movement going. This is where I disagree with Keating. I think it would make an impact.

3. Not only should people stop giving bishops money. They should stop giving the “good” bishops money and they should stop going to their dinners and accepting their invitations, etc. until they call for an investigation into the McCarrick issue. The people in positions of influence need to desert their bishops, make them feel alone. Basically they need to shun their bishops. What is a bishop without a flock? What is a bishop who holds a fundraiser dinner that no one shows up to? Of course some people are always going to show up because they want to be close to the bishop, but people with money and influence need to shun their bishops, even if they like them until they bring about action in the McCarrick affair.

Finally, I think the reason more bishops aren’t speaking out publicly is because they don’t want the contagion of scandal to spread to their diocese. No one is talking about it and if they write a letter it will all of a sudden become news. I could be wrong but I just don’t see the laity upset at all. So until they get upset and do something this is going to be exactly what Wuerl said it is, a localized and specific scandal.

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192 Responses to The Church’s Coming Catastrophe

“If the Catholic bishops are in crisis, so too are the laity, it seems to me.”

I once had a prominent layman and his wife say to me (when discussing their priest, whom they loved): “Once a year we have to send him to Club Med to get laid.” Then they giggled. This from a very posh couple in their mid-60s.

Faithful Christians need to become aware of the realities of spiritual abuse: what it is and how it occurs so often right under our noses.

Anytime anyone in a position of spiritual authority — a minister, a priest, a bishop — uses said authority to shame or manipulate a parishioner into accomplishing a certain end, that’s spiritual abuse.

It can be of the Jimmy Swaggart variety. It can be bishops shaming parishioners that if “you don’t support the bishops, that means you must not love the church.” It can manifest as parishioners supporting a sexually molesting priest because they have been trained by him to do so.

Spiritual abuse is real and happens. Christ never condoned it. He fought it amongst the Pharisees regularly.

I’m an Orthodox Christian, and we saw this in our Orthodox Church in America (the former Russian Orthodox Metropolia, pre-1970) a decade or so ago, when gross financial improprieties were uncovered. Some clergy and bishops shamed some faithful into not talking about it or that they “shouldn’t worry about it” because “we don’t want to air the church’s dirty laundry.” This was and is flagrant spiritual abuse.

The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in America is now going through similar times now with terrible financial problems. Construction at the St Nicholas center at Ground Zero in Manhattan has stopped because there is no money. GOA leaders do not want questions asked, and some do shame parishioners who look into where all the money went. Spiritual abuse. I have not been able to stomach going into a GOA parish now for about 20 years. I find my spiritual home in a loving, warm parish of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia – for me, this is where I grow closest to Christ and where I find the spiritual abuse negligible or nonexistent.

With few saintly exceptions, there are no perfect spiritual fathers. However, faithful Christians need to hunt out emotionally healthy pastors, priests, and bishops. Christian leaders who are emotionally healthy are much less likely to be spiritual abusers.

Sadly, like husbands and wives seeking each other, faithful are generally attracted to pastors and Church leaders who live on a similar emotional level as they are. Just as an emotionally immature man is attracted to an emotionally immature woman, an emotionally immature flock is typically more OK with priests and bishops who are spiritual abusers.

Thanks be to God, the validity of sacraments does not depend on the emotional health of those administering the sacraments.

For those of us who grew up in emotionally unhealthy or abusive homes, it takes a tremendous amount of work and healing to identify what constitutes abuse. For years, we thought it was “normal,” but it’s not.

I pray for my faithful Roman Catholic friends who are strive to grow in Christ. Learn about spiritual abuse, learn to spot it, and don’t stand for it.

From my experience, if a church leader can’t deal with abusive realities when they are out in the open, who thinks there’s no problem, who thinks that the faithful are “emotionally overreacting,” who’s completely unable to empathize with the predicament of his flock — these are huge signs that he’s a spiritual abuser.

Rod, somewhere between fifty and one hundred thousand priests abandoned their vocations in the ten years from 1965. The Church was in utter chaos. Countless laymen lost their faith. The new Church is essentially a collection of driftwood from that disaster, dressed up as a tight ship. What you are observing isn’t a coming crisis, but just another periodic disturbance of the driftwood. The only reason anybody thinks this present disturbance is a major crisis is that they don’t know what happened fifty years ago. They weren’t there, or it was too big for them really to see.

The causes? They changed everything that mattered, including the mass, the sacramental rites, and most importantly, they made belief a matter of choice. There will be no revival of faith on any significant basis from within that new system. It would be like hoping for a recovery of Catholicism in 1590 from within the Church of England.

Your priest correspondent is, unfortunately, probably right that the web almost surely makes the lay outrage over #McCarrick seem more intense than it really is on the ground. But that doesn’t make your prediction about what’s looming for the Church wrong. Setting aside immigrant parishes, your typical active Catholic pewsitter in America today is a white boomer; and at all odds most aren’t very aware or outraged about this, for reasons we can all fairly guess. But younger generations were not raised with the same sense of religious obligation the Boomers were, and priests are kidding themselves if they think won’t deepen a looming demographic crisis for the Church that hardly needed the deepening.

And he’s far too sanguine, in my assessment, about the nature of the men in American Catholic hierarchy. “My assertion is that the most likely explanation for what we are seeing isn’t corruption, it’s incompetence.” I would like to suggest that it’s both. I’ve seen enough of it up close and personal.

Bishop James Conley was on the Academy Board of Advisors of St Gregory’s during a 2000-2002 investigation examining allegations of sexual misconduct and other misdeeds by SSJ members against students. This advisory board found that school administrators were not negligent, instead finding that the administration came under unfair attack. On a website dedicated to the school’s history, there are links to letters by former board members, including Bishop Conley, arguing that Headmaster Alan Hicks and his assistant Howard Clark (both friends and former schoolmates of Conley) are trustworthy men who have been wronged by someone making false accusations on the internet. https://stgregoryshistory.wordpress.com/controversy/

In 2005 the Diocese of Scranton and other entities settled a sexual abuse lawsuit brought by a former student.

I would like to think well of Bishop Conley and to be confident that he will handle the crisis in the Lincoln Diocese decisively. Do his past actions suggest he will do so, or that he will behave like other bishops and just do damage control so as to preserve his position?

First let me say thank you for your courage to make this much needed piece public. I weep for the other Catholic girl that I was that trusted all I learned and all priests. I am a 74 year old woman who has a long history with the GS in St. Louis and many award both as a girl and adult. More than 10 years ago I started learning who the GS were. I at that time had one daughter who in fact was a leader of our granddaughter. I was horrified and assumed that the St. L. Archdiocese had no idea or they would close this liberal, progressive, radical feminist group down. I was and had been a mbr of the Catholic Committee and had received the St. Ann and other awards within our Archdiocese. I demanded a meeting and presented to three members all the evil …ex. George Soros..sex..etc. that I had uncovered. The three Archdidocese officials basically told me to go and keep quiet that..the GS do so much good. So…the end justifies the means I questioned. I was sent a letter asking me to never consider myself a member of the Catholic Committee again. Fortunately C-FAM Austin Ruse phoned me and asked me if in fact I would help him manage a FB page entitled Make the Girl Scouts Clean Again. I agreed and have worked for years at the goal of exposing to those who are in the dysfunctional family that you speak of. I was overjoyed when Archbishop Carlson put forth a statement regards the GS not being in keeping with the Catholic faith. Little did I know that within the parishes the priests…except for two in St. L. that I spoke to would do nothing. I believe that the GS are paying off the Archdiocese. Bishop Rice had a meeting with this council. I was there I saw him go in. A pic of me in front of the council is on the fb page. I personally asked the pastor at St. Pauls in Fenton whom did at my insistence allow a AHG troop of which I am the shepherd to start up. However he kept the GS. When I questioned him he said…oh Jane those guys down there and laughed. So…I believe that he was under great pressure to keep the GS’s. I also watched The Review Archdiocese newspaper place the St.L.gs place ads in the paper. Years have gone by and nothing is done. I realize that this pales by comparison and yet it is the same issue. I sent Archbishop Carlson the dismissal letter that I received from the CYA office. The response was pathetic. Please know there are many who do care and are anxious to expose this dysfunctional family because it only by coming to grips with this that we can heal. I pray for my family and work daily to expose the evil of this one small area that I know well. Some say to me how can you do this whe so many think you are crazy to even care. To them I say I can never say no to God. Our one daughter started up FB Keep our St. Louis Catholic Schools Catholic and exposes the heresy and evil introduced in our Catholic private High Schools. I weep. The focus of Heaven is my goal for myself and family. Thank you, Jane E. Petry

John Perth wrote, “most importantly, they made belief a matter of choice.”

I have to put in a correction. It was not the Catholic Church that made belief a matter of choice. It was the fact that Catholics were moving out of their ghettos as fast as they could run and their Protestant neighbors were teaching them that belief really was a matter of choice. It was not like were sheep stealing on purpose, it was just that the Catholics were seeing that we were doing all the things they were told not to and not being struck by lightning.

To put it simply, the Catholic Church lost its power to scare. Once that went it was all downhill.

” gay networks within the Church, which is unavoidable if you want to understand how Theodore McCarrick gained power and maintained it for so long, the bishops are going to be badly exposed. ”

Michael Novak, whose parents were born in Slovakia and who’s visiting here including watching the Towers fall on 9/11 2001 (Mt. Pelerin Society meeting), he says there is homosexual mafia inside the Catholic Church. A gay mafia which consistently promotes those who are queers, and is against those who are against that behavior.

The Church has many rotten branches, bishops – and probably cardinals. Cardinal Pell, convicted of covering up sex abuse, was forced to resign, even tho he was probably trying to reform the Church from the inside.

Maybe Pell, knowing very many, possibly most, of the illegal sex scandals still in the closets, maybe he’s getting ready to talk? I heard that he fears for his own life about doing so.

None of this is a surprise for those who have followed good (even if not yet approved) private revelation — nor will what shall soon come be a surprise for them — nor is what must be done a mystery to them. But this group is, unfortunately, very small; for even “orthodox Catholics” have been told for decades now, by career lay apologists, that private revelation basically doesn’t matter, unless perhaps it’s 100% Vatican approved, in which cases it kind of matters a little bit (but still probably shouldn’t be taken too seriously).

“If the media — the mainstream media, or the alternative media — start digging into the gay networks within the Church, which is unavoidable if you want to understand how Theodore McCarrick gained power and maintained it for so long, the bishops are going to be badly exposed.”

Seems unlikely that the mainstream media would look into this, as based on some of your previous statements it sounds like many of their reporters were somewhat complicit in that they knew about the gay sex stuff going on in McCarrick’s life ut left it alone because he was one of their guys.

Charlie Cos, for the sake of those who care about supernatural religion, as distinct from you and the vast number for whom religion is a natural comfort, you have your history exactly reversed. John XXIII showed in a score of ways that doctrine was no longer mandated with divinely instituted sanctions, but was a matter of choice. He began this total revolution in 1959.

The Protestants, who were already there, and had been for centuries, nevertheless kept one eye on Rome, and when they realised that “rome” was now essentially Protestant (i.e. liberal) too, they went for it without restraint. You express it perfectly – people doing what they want.

Those who know their Holy Scripture will be familiar with that mysterious text in which we are informed that the man of sin cannot be revealed until that which withholdest is taken out of the way. Well, John XXIII handled that neatly.

Rod – I love your work, especially How Dante Can Save your Life. And, I agree that the McCarrick scandal is the tip of the iceberg relating to homosexual activity and misconduct among Catholic clergy. Perhaps we have finally come to the point where this whole house of iniquity and shame will finally be exposed and the Church will be forced to come to grips with it.

However, may I make a comment? It seems to me there is a tint of self-justficication in your writing on this issue: “See, I was right to leave the Church when I did and now you should see why!” The strong implication I take from your writing (whether intentional or not) is that other Catholics should now (finally!) wake up and follow you out of the Church. I am sure you don’t intend that, but I think this issue is so personal for you that you come off even a bit gleeful to have been :vindicated.” Please, keep up the writing until the rot is thoroughly exposed, but perhaps you might take a step back and consider whether your writing is calculated(even subconsciously or inadvertently) to talk other Catholics into leaving the Church because that’s what you did and you believe it was the right decision for you.

[NFR: Of course I believe that I made the right decision, but if you detect any personal pleasure in this work I do about corruption in the Catholic Church today, you’re badly mistaken. There’s still grief in it. Even if you didn’t believe that, look at it from a purely financial point of view. This latest writing will likely mean that my speech bookings at many Catholic venues will dry up. Besides, if I were taking pleasure in the miseries of the Catholic Church, I wouldn’t have written a book in which I put faithful Catholic monks at the heart of it, and call them a light for the entire Christian world. — RD]

So why is it that Catholic priests, bishops, etc, are okay with recreational drinking?

Because alcohol, and the kind of altered consciousness that it and other psychotropic drugs can provide, is one of life’s great pleasures? And because Jesus, you know, turned water into wine? Not grape juice, but wine?

Decreased inhibition can be a very good thing as well as (sometimes) a bad thing: I’d argue that most of us, most of the time, are excessively inhibited rather than excessively disinhibited. Including when it comes to sex.

The scandal in the Roman Catholic church stems from the same root that has given us the Deep State, and the Corporate Ladder: careerism. When people decide that the security, status, and perquisites of a particular career ( vocation ) are the most important things in their lives, then that career becomes their god. I say this as a former devout Roman Catholic who has witnessed this phenomenon in every walk of life, for over fifty years.

When my son and daughter were growing up, in order to prepare them for “real” life, I felt it was my responsibility to pass along to them observations I had made along the way. I told them this, “When you get into the world of work, you will discover three kinds of people: those who come to work to collect a paycheck, those who come to work to do their job, and those who come to work to advance their careers. Of the three, the last group is the one to avoid at all costs.”

As for loving the Church before loving God, alas, this disease afflicts all denominations in one form or another. It may be easier to do in a “high-church” liturgical setting with a deep heirarchy and history ( as an altar boy who spoke Latin, I loved the ceremonies of the RC church ), but it is evident everywhere. Attending most modern Protestant churches has taught me that having a loud band “performing” in front of the “audience” is what draws a lot of people to those congregations, along with coffee bars in the lobby, and a religious jargon suited to the times. It is repugnant to me.

It is difficult for any church body not to fall victim to the twin sins of careerism and worshipping the golden calf of ceremony. These things ultimately breed more glaring sins amongst both the clergy and the laity, because they are sins of pride.

Your familial experience is, sadly, typical of what I am seeing. I am in my early 70s and so many friends of mine of a similar age who attend Mass, receive the sacraments and otherwise try to adhere to the teachings of the church have children who don’t even bother anymore. It’s very sad and discouraging. And the toughest part about it is–that I do understand why it is that they don’t bother. All one need do is open one’s eyes and ears and look around. Is it any wonder that the Catholic Church and Christianity in general doesn’t work for the younger generations?

Rod, I know you and many of your readers believe that Christianity is under attack from the outside. I realize, as a non-believer, that my perspective may be unwelcome (I’ve written several comments that you haven’t posted), but I don’t think you have to look beyond the Catholic Church itself to find the necessary and sufficient conditions for its seemingly endless sex scandals. Three central tenets of Catholic dogma give rise to those conditions: celibacy, ordination of men only, and the demonization of homosexuality.

Celibacy: It’s neither humane, nor in the case of most people, even possible to require life-long celibacy as a condition of employment. Any kind of employment. Particularly a job that requires counseling parishioners on matters of sex. How can a priest guide his flock from a position of enforced ignorance? It’s inevitable that the majority of Catholic priests will be sexually active at some point in their lives— they’re only human. And when they are, the doctrine of celibacy forces them to make a choice: lie about it or quit. Why, then, should we be surprised to discover vast webs of deceit in the church hierarchy? It’s the predictable outcome of an untenable policy.

Ordination of men only: There is no rational argument for this ridiculous restriction. Why does the Catholic Church, which desperately needs leaders, want to hobble itself by cutting their available pool of leadership in half? Male genitalia should uniquely qualify a person for only two jobs: gigolo or stripper.

Demonization of homosexuality: At the same time that the Church’s single-sex employment policy naturally encourages gay men to join the clergy, Catholic dogma condemns gay sex. These two conditions work hand in hand to ensure an unhealthy atmosphere of guilt, shame, secrecy, and predation for gay Catholic priests. Everyone (yes, everyone) rejects Leviticus’ call to execute shrimp eaters and the proper way to sell a daughter into slavery. It’s long past time for the Catholic church to reject the benighted persecution of homosexuality too. That is, unless it wants to continue to destroy itself.

[NFR: You really understand nothing of Christian theology, or the dynamics of the abuse scandal. — RD]

“Some of these bloggers would never have let St. Augustine or St. Peter into the priesthood.”
Considering that Augustine fought against the Donatists, the heretics that were basically demanding that the ones that minister the sacraments be holy themselves, not letting him in the priesthood might have been a good idea.

“Since you rigorists are being so hard on priests, consider doing the same to the laity. Why not reveal publicly every couple who doesn’t fulfill the conjugal act according to their public vow? Or every married man who masturbates while looking at porn and violates his public vow?” – So now consensual sex, even if adulterous, and harmless* solitary acts are at the same level with raping children? He is basically saying that if you masturbated once you can’t say anything about a boy rapist. I’m sure that there is a sophistry somewhere in the catholic theology saying that masturbation and repeated rape of minors that trusted the rapist are the same but to the rest of mankind, but the rest of mankind doesn’t care about the so called catholic theology.

“Every layman is called to the same standard as a priest.” – So, that means that should the layman rapes a minor he will get a slap in the wrist and a vacation in Paraguay?

Re: So why is it that Catholic priests, bishops, etc, are okay with recreational drinking?

They are not OK with drunkenness– and we should bear in mind that it is indeed possible to drink without getting plastered. Traditional Christian thought on this was formed long before distilled liquor came on the scene and in an era when fermented beverages were safer than water and were one of the few ways to store calories and other important nutrients long term. The fact that the Eucharist requires wine (canonically, yes, it does) also militates against any sort of total alcohol ban.

Actions speak louder than empty promises. It’s high time to face the facts…the complicit or indifferent clerical hierarchy can not be trusted to investigate themselves or to prevent future horrendous crimes against minors or seminarians. The church must submit to investigation and oversight by a national (due to the scope of the problem) law enforcement agency, maybe the FBI. Likewise, anyone who is or has been a victim shouldn’t bother calling their local bishop and instead go straight to their DA. Once someone is found guilty they should be defrocked, serve jail time, be registered as a sex offender, and have all of their personal assets confiscated to defray the costs of the settlements. Anyone found to have knowledge of an unreported crime should pay a hefty fine towards a settlement fund.

Decades of passing the perverts from parish to parish has led us here and the only thing that will work going forward is strict monitoring by an outside oversight agency with full financial audit powers, and punishments for perpetrators and their accomplices that are severe enough to deter future crimes.

[NFR: There is no way an outside oversight agency could do this. It is certainly not the government’s place to monitor religious organizations to that extent. If an organization can’t be trusted to protect its own children from predators within the organization, then it will fall apart. — RD]

Replying to NFR: If FINRA can monitor the financial industry and thousands of brokers nationwide then there is no reason that the same system can’t be used to monitor and audit any other organization for crimes including a religious one. Perhaps the church would have to submit voluntarily but since they receive federal funds they may be compelled to. Either way it won’t affect any religious or doctrinal function of the church.

Hello Rod. Another Rod here, Protestant seminary trained, from a long line of Protestant ministers, also served for a short time as a Protestant missionary. Convert along with my wife in 2013 and subsequently all my children {they are adults}.

History is replete with crises in the Church. God didn’t strip free will from converts, confirmed faithful nor from clergy, to be sure, and often all shame themselves and the Church in their exercise of that free will in both the sacred and secular. For myself, I didn’t choose for the Church based on the virtue of its leaders, and I won’t leave due to a lack thereof, though I readily admit to extreme frustration with the current culture as it stands.

I want especially to thank you for posting your “UPDATE.2: A long e-mail from a parish priest, with some sharp words, including for me”. That comment really sums up what I have come to think about this entire situation, including the recommendation for lay action in response to it. There is a sentence or two I disagree with but overall, it is thought-provoking and worthy of posting.

There is a interesting statement in the Letter of Barnabas that says that Jesus specifically selected bad men for his disciples and of course we have the passage in St Matthew 9:9-11 which gives a slightly different but similar reference to those he reached out to. I have to admit pondering that statement from the Letter of Barnabas in recent days.

The Church is in crisis, to be sure. The laity are responding as they can, and blogging is one forum for their involvement that may or may not be appreciated by the clergy. At this point, to be frank, I really do not care much for the sensitivities of Catholic prelates on the issue of what the faithful do in response to this current abuse crisis. They have left the laity little option but to use the tools at hand.

Aggressive response by the clergy and hierarchy will militate against excessive demands for heads, and ignoring the problem will only encourage more aggressive responses from the laity. It is time for some changes to be made, and the hierarchy is going to have to be a factor in those changes.

It is fascinating to me that the attempt to obfuscate Church teaching on the death penalty just happens to pop up at a time when a fresh new batch of abusers is being readied for public display, some of whom in more sensible times may very well have rightly earned a place on the gallows.

[NFR: You really understand nothing of Christian theology, or the dynamics of the abuse scandal. — RD]

I’d rather you attack the point I’m making rather than me, personally. I presume you disagree, but do you mean to say that the institutions of celibacy, male-only ordination and Catholic abhorrence of homosexuality have nothing at all to do with this crisis?

[NFR: I don’t mean to attack you personally. The things you are calling for don’t make sense within Catholic (or Orthodox) theology. (Except for ending celibacy, which could happen within Catholicism, as it is a discipline, not a doctrine.) As a non-believer, I can’t expect you to know this, but we don’t just make this stuff up as we go along. It would be like me parachuting in and telling electricians how they ought to change the way they do things. — RD]

Re: Nevertheless, point taken–I believe you are correct about Wycliffe’s influence upon Jan Hus.

Wyclife was protected by various members of the English royal family, including by John of Gaunt and Joan of Kent, mother to Richard II. Richard was married to Anne of Bohemia and members of her suite were influenced by him. She died in a major plague epidemic in 1394, and many of her people returned home bringing Wyclife’s teachings with them.

Ordination of men only: There is no rational argument for this ridiculous restriction.

So what? Religious precepts don’t need any rational basis. God, or the gods, requires it, that’s all that’s necessary. I’ve read some fairly good arguments that women are liturgically unqualified for this specific role, whatever their objective skills or qualifications.

My own church began ordaining women in the late 19th century, and a centennial history of the denomination says ‘We felt that we should not put administrative barriers in the way of whomever God might be pleased to call.’ That makes perfect sense to me, but it might not to an observant Roman Catholic.

Again, there is no requirement that religious doctrine be submitted to a rational basis test. What does God think about it all? We’ll find out when we get to the other side. Or not, if there is none.

Damian says: “None of this is a surprise for those who have followed good (even if not yet approved) private revelation — nor will what shall soon come be a surprise for them — nor is what must be done a mystery to them.”

D’accord. The crisis in the Catholic Church, and the world in general, is going to deepen to the point that it will look as if the Catholic Church has disappeared. Saints and mystics have been telling us this for several centuries. The Warning, the Miracle, the chastisement, then restoration. These things are contained in Sacred Scripture and can be found in the writings of the early Church.

[NFR: Yes, that’s what the Catholic Church teaches about us. Obviously we believe that about ourselves. We are not, in Catholic eyes, some form of Protestant. — RD]

Well, the Episcopalians and certain Lutherans also have apostolic succession as well, although obviously Catholics don’t consider such claims valid (having excommunicated the relevant bishops after the Reformation). But you knew that already…

There are a number of baby steps that if taken would go a long way toward implementing the Benedict option. One of them would be a full on attack on the notion that real men drink beer, and that urbane men drink hard liquor, which I have reason to believe is both part of the culture of our seminaries and a very halpful aid to sexual abusers . And if our Bishops are serious about undetaking penance for the sexual abuse scandal, and urging the rest ofthe Church to do the same, surely a large proportion of them taking the pledge would go a long way toward demonstrating their sincerity.

This is one aspect to this ongoing, never ending debacle which I have never heard discussed nor even alluded to until reading your column and its comments this evening. To anyone who reads through the files of predatory, homosexual priests now posted online on many diocesan websites, as I have, there is one fact that begins to dawn on one after a while. Admittedly, I have only thoroughly read through five of them for they make very discouraging reading, but in every case alcohol played a very large part in these events. The priest had some young man over. They spent the evening drinking and seduction ensued. My guess is that that– or something very much like it–is the template for virtually the entire scandal.

It was the case for my brother who went off to St. Mary’s in Baltimore in 1969. An upperclassman seminarian got him drunk and abused him that autumn. Our father had died that summer, and I think Art must have been very vulnerable emotionally. And so we had the scene at the end of that academic year that while the upperclassman was being ordained deacon my brother was rocking back and forth in a fourth story window of his dorm on the verge of suicide. The only thing that prevented him was the thought of how it would affect our mother. That was in 1970. He lived the marvelous lifestyle for another 23 years and died of AIDS in 1993, after a deathbed conversion.

At any rate, I have never heard the alcohol/scandal relationship mentioned, but it seems to me it cries out for thorough-going research.

Now, if the research bears out my thesis, what should be the response on the part of the episcopate, the presbyterate? Should it be primarily official statements (of which I have had a bellyful, your Excellencies), “Called to Protect” indoctrination and training for teachers, ministers, etc, or the little signs that one finds on the grounds of monasteries and seminaries to the effect that children should accompany their parents at all times? For what are we protecting our children from but priests!!?? All of this business I find completely maddening as bureaucratic, faux solutions to a very fundamental and blatant problem or constellation of problems. Frankly, I am not sure that the basic, fundamental problem is alcoholism, drinking or homosexual tendencies in some percentage of priests, but it does seem very likely that research would show that drinking on the part of priests with homosexual tendencies does lower their inhibitions and opens the way to mayhem, or at least that it was the common denominator in virtually all incidents.

Now in light of that fact, if it is a fact as I think, what then ought to be the response on the part of the Church? Well, for one thing, I doubt very much that Belloc’s cheery little ditty ought to have currency in a seminary or rectory anymore: “Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, There’s always laughter and good red wine. At least I’ve always found it so. ‘Benedicamus Domino!'” Enough is enough. Let us put it aside for a few centuries while we do penance for the sins of inebriated priests and bishops.

At the time of my brother’s unhappy sojourn, St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore had a bar, presumably so that future priests would learn how to handle their liquor. It is not very difficult to imagine what the saints would think of that arrangement, and in any case it seems not to have had the desired effect.

Regarding Belloc’s paen to good red wine, I get it. We are not Puritans. Surely we have established that. At this point, though, we have to establish in the public mind that we are not perverts. It should only take decades and possibly centuries.. That is the reality of the situation. And how might our bishops and priests do that? I can think of few things more to the point both in terms of penance, or preventing future incidents, or in terms of recovering our standing in the public eye than by taking the pledge en masse and by making it known to the world at large. Yes, your brother fell, not you, but who will do penance if not you, priest of Jesus Christ, or you His bishop? And who will lead us laity in pentitence away from our typically all too sybaritic lives except repentant, abstemious clergy?

Les autres c’est enfer, says Sarte, but the doctrine of the Mystical Body implicates us all. “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.” If one is disgraced, we are all disgraced, and deservedly, very deservedly. It is not only hierarchy at fault. We are out of grace, for we as a people have given up the many disciplines that bought down graces from Heaven for both priest and people. It is time for a complete about-face, for de-mitigation, for ratcheting up our spirit of self-sacrifice. Taking the pledge would be a step in the right direction, a baby step. At the same time it would be a significant step out of Babylon.

“For all the people clamoring about wanting priests to be holy, well what about you? Why don’t you try being holy and stop pointing fingers?”

This is nothing but putting a guilt trip on people to get them to shut up. That’s the Catholic way, and it comes from the clergy’s demand for blind deference. “Catholic guilt” is not a comedic line; it’s real and the clergy perpetuate it to serve their own selfish interests.

[NFR: I don’t mean to attack you personally. The things you are calling for don’t make sense within Catholic (or Orthodox) theology. (Except for ending celibacy, which could happen within Catholicism, as it is a discipline, not a doctrine.) As a non-believer, I can’t expect you to know this, but we don’t just make this stuff up as we go along. It would be like me parachuting in and telling electricians how they ought to change the way they do things. — RD]

OK, it’s not as angry as your first response, but both are ad hominem statements that don’t remotely address my point. (In essence: “You’re ignorant / stupid / not one of Us, so I don’t need to consider your argument.”) There’s nothing in my post that accuses anyone of making “stuff up”, and I’m not “calling for” anything. I’m well aware that celibacy, male ordination and anti-homosexuality are longstanding traditions in the Church (or “doctrines” or “disciplines” or as you like). My point is that a serious consideration of the root causes of the current crisis must include examining if, or how, these traditions contribute to that crisis. Or, we could just ignore the several large elephants in the room, and dump on anyone who dares to mention them.

[NFR: The word “doctrines” is not a synonym for “disciplines.” Seriously, you don’t understand what’s going on here. You want to be taken seriously, but you evidently don’t grasp even the basics of Christian theology, within which reforms will have to take place. I’ll pass. — RD]

‘I am very troubled by the reported response from the audience (assuming that it was reported accurately). Troubled, but not quite surprised. If the Catholic bishops are in crisis, so too are the laity, it seems to me.’

I don’t know if you will believe this… but about 16-18 yrs ago, I personally watched a priest put his hands all over a teenaged boy IN FRONT OF THE BOY’S MOTHER, who laughed and thought it was fine. The boy, needless to say, did neither of those things.

I also know of a different priest who was removed from ministry immediately (! yes, really, the system does work correctly sometimes) after it was discovered he had done something to a tiny child that was so loathesome that I will not even describe it to you… and parishioners instantly wrote angry letters about how wonderful dear Father is, and how bad that mean ol’ Bishop is to treat him so unjustly. The evidence in this case was so objective and so overwhelming that there was literally NO WAY the priest was wrongly accused.

Bottom line? There are lots and lots of stupid people out there, and many of them belong to Catholic parishes. Don’t be surprised. We’re going to see a lot more of this in the near future, I reckon…